Helen of Troy
by Collie Parkillo
Summary: Uryuu Minene falls in love with Gasai Yuno the way a bomb goes off. [yunene, canon divergence]


Uryuu Minene falls in love with Gasai Yuno the way a bomb goes off. Minene knows a lot about bombs, having spent her whole life planting them and examining what's inside them, but she can't rip herself open and examine the wires that are making her heart tick a countdown to an explosion.

It's Yuno's smile she falls in love with first. It hits her when Yuno has a knife in her hands that she is so, so beautiful and even though blood stains her hands she's perfect. A quality Minene could not manage, no matter how low cut her dresses are. There is nothing beautiful about Minene, but Yuno is a princess, not a warrior woman, and Minene wonders for a moment how her small frame would feel in her arms.

She slumps against her wall when she gets home, staring blankly at the gothic lolita gowns hanging up on the walls like reminders that she will never be anything more than a has-been. But it isn't jealousy blackening her heart. It's something deeper, something much more terrifying, and Minene draws her knees up to her face and bites down on her lip until it bleeds as though that will make it go away.

And it doesn't. She paces the streets at two in the morning, scratches at her skin with her ragged fingernails, but the feeling is still _there._ And she knows no one can see it, that it's not something she can scrub off in the shower if she reaches far down enough, but somehow she feels exposed.

Yuno's voice is soft and high and whenever she speaks Minene's heart rises in her throat and she has to squeeze her eyes shut because that voice is ordering death upon innocent people, that voice is the voice of a child gone insane. It's not the soft voice of a lover, like Nishijima's

And it hits her how horrible, how taboo this is, and Minene stands over the toilet in the public bathroom and vomits because she is _disgusting. _Yuno is a little girl. Yuno is a child. She's far more grown up than Minene ever could be, but she's still a child. And Minene still has Nishijima, a sweet (boring) and loving (dull) man who'd do anything to protect her. He's warm when he kisses her but his body is hard (Yuno' is soft and Minene longs to wrap her hands around the curve of her waist) and his smiles are mundane (Yuno's curve up at the sides and her eyes light up when she smiles, her eyes are the thing Minene loves the most.)

Minene thinks to herself that perhaps she used to think of Nishijima like this. Perhaps she used to describe his every quality to herself and scrawl his name on her arms when she couldn't sleep at night, but now all her nights are sleepless and she hears Yuno's voice in her head chanting_ yuki yuki yuki yuki yu— minene minene minene minene minene minene **mine.**_

But those are only nightmares, and Yuno is in love with poor, scared Amano Yukiteru. Or perhaps 'in love with' would be taking it too literally. She treats him like a prized childhood possession that no one can touch, elevates him up onto a pedestal he can't get down from. And Minene can't help but feel bad for Yukiteru, but somehow a biting jealousy finds its way into her as well.

Yuno is insane. Yuno is traumatized and the result of that is insanity. She's wild and destructive and horrible and kills with no regrets. Yuno would not fall in love. Not with her. Not with anyone. She would obsess, stalk, but never love. Perhaps she isn't capable of it, Minene thinks, but she pushes that thought away because it's comforting to think that in a different life perhaps she and Yuno could love each other.

Not that Yuno ever really would. She's a girl, Minene is a girl, it would be taboo, and Minene feels the hushed voice of shame in her ears when Nishijima fumbles with the clasp on her dress because she feels nothing, his fingers are too thick and his body is too hard and she tries to find something to latch onto in him but she _can't._

That's when the tears start coming. Alone on her bed, feeling empty when she used to feel full of love, because she imagines Yuno's voice when Nishijima whispers sweet words to her. Where there used to be a heart in her chest there's only a black hole of guilt where she buries all the feelings she doesn't want. Her tears are salty and warm and when they run down her cheeks, she draws her blankets around her and reminds herself that she is not a little girl and she should not be crying over something this petty.

But this isn't petty. The realization comes upon her that she sees something in Yuno that no one else does. She sees someone she's in love with, not someone who fell in love with her. She is in love with Gasai Yuno, she wants to take her out to dinner and fall asleep with her. Suddenly she understands Aru Akise, the boy who saw the world in Yukiteru even when Yukiteru wasn't even looking at him.

Minene can't get out of bed the next day. It's as though she's sick, even though she feels no headache or stomachache, but she doesn't even get out of bed to eat. That day is the day she decides that this has to end, and the thought weighs heavy in her mind the whole day and the whole night.

She twists the red and blue wires together to form the perfect bomb, the way she has her whole life, but her fingers shake this time and she blinks away what could be tears. When she finishes, she looks away from the bomb as she disguises it carefully in her bag. She'd like to pretend it wasn't there, that she wasn't really going to do what she was going to do.

But she had to.

_All for the sake of love._

Minene wanders the empty streets at four in the morning, looking for the address she crudely wrote down. She wonders if maybe she is really sick, if she caught some sort of stomach bug along the way because she feels like throwing up all of the sudden. But there it is, the house she's been looking for, and Minene takes the bomb out of her bag, staring down at it with regret giving her a piercing headache.

She's going to get caught, just throw it, just throw the damn thing, just kill her. So Minene does, and runs away as fast as she can go with the boom echoing in her ears when she goes back to sleep.

Minene's bleary senses hear sirens outside before she even opens her eyes. Ambulances. Police. Maybe it was all a nightmare. Nothing happened. It was just a dream. She blinks, and then closes her eyes again because she must, absolutely must be dreaming.

But the eyes staring at her are still there, and the voice she heard in her dreams for months is still there, punctuated with a soft giggle.

_"Good show out there, Minene-chan." _

* * *

**i haven't written mirai nikki in a little while. hello again. **


End file.
